Chapter 412: An Endearing Entity’s Identity: Black Interlude Part 1

While Ares was headed back to Oasis to rest up, the pagoda Ares clone was getting full-on blotto in good company.

Mraowwwww

... Well ares was definitely drunk but he was still a far-cry from being the most drunk person in the room. That title went, without a doubt, to Havannah who was lying on her back and pawing at the sky with a big dumb grin on her face... Ares had been trying not to laugh at this for the better part of the last thirty minutes but he couldn't help but keep snickering to himself along with Nickel, the dwarven technical God, and Dominus. Dominus had finally managed to worm his way 'out' of Ares' body... Sort of. Or, rather, he could now lean halfway out of Ares like a red shadow in the shape of his armoured upper body. Not going through bloodline awakening the proper way really complicated the Dominus clone's ability to interact with the world for a good while and the fact that neither he nor the clone Ares were real also made it harder to sort this mess out. Now he could poke his head out and talk normally, though, so he was enjoying his freedom to speak in the real world, or as close as he could get to it currently anyway, and chatting up a storm with an old acquaintance. Nickel and Dominus had a bit of overlap in the art department so they'd worked on art creation together a couple times or sought each other out when looking for creation related troubles / advice on how to proceed. The weapons pillar and the technical pillar were quite similar in a lot of regards and the Gods of them, as well as the exemplars and loyalest of followers, got along well enough. As far as allegiances went, they were one of the more steady and sturdy ones due to their plentiful numbers, generally high skilled cultivators, and all around versatility in just about any and every way. Nickel also occasionally joined Dominus' outcast group to play some games and share some booze with them here and there whenever a party was being throw but he wasn't really a part of the group at large, just a semi-frequent passer-by.

Nickel had already heard the good news, that Dominus wasn't dead, and so he was in a good mood and drinking plenty to celebrate the return of his arts partner in crime... Well that was his excuse anyway, Nickel just really liked to drink his dwarven heart out whenever he found an opportunity to do so. Reunions, partings, parties, sombre events and passings, weddings, wine tastings, any day ending in 'Y', etc... Overall, the atmosphere here was pleasant and friendly and everyone had gotten to know each other well so this was a good outing for everyone involved. Nickel met Dominus again. Nickel also got to know Ares and enjoy some of his home-brewed alcohol the clone made in his spare time to abate his boredom, and their personalities were similar enough that there was friendly chemistry, plus Ares was great with technicals and Nickel was partial to such people! Nickel stole Echo after being shown it, immediately used it after seeing it once and once only, and even improved the art all in the blink of an eye, showcasing his Godly talent to Ares who watched the dwarf cast a pulsating Echo that struck multiple times instead of just once per cast! Impressive little fella! That aside, there was also Ares and Havannah who got along like a house on fire as they had a lot in common. Especially whenever they brawled for hours on end and got really into it, that was where the height of their chemistry was as laying waste to everything on the planet, sometimes even the planet itself, was like a destructive bonding exercise.

Ares wanted to get to know Havanah better but he definitely was partial to her already and everything she brought to the table. Even this drunken kitty side of her brought him a fair bit of joy and laughs so there was no real reason for him to refuse her proposal to be her mate. By the time she left the pagoda he would almost definitely have made his mind up and accepted her but he wasn't going to tell her that just yet as he wanted to keep fighting with her and she'd probably head off, begrudgingly, if she got what she wanted. She wanted to stay, that much was obvious, but she couldn't ignore fundamental champion duties forever and piling up the work on poor Sanity wasn't something she would do to her good friend. Plus it wasn't like she couldn't come back during down time but, even so, Ares was going to have her stay for a while longer!

All in all, this meeting had been great... Which was a stark difference to how some of the other meetings went... Not that any of them went terribly, per se, he hadn't made enemies... But some of the other champions were just strange! The fundamentals all seemed to have a screw loose or two... Of them all, Ares was actually most interested in 'Black' but that was a matter for real Ares to deal with... Ares burst out laughing again when he remembered what it was he learnt about Black specifically that blew his mind because he might have been the first person to figure out what manner of creature the Black parasite really way underneath all its facades...

A while ago, back when all the fundamental champions first entered the pagoda at roughly the same time...

Ares was going over his opinions about the other fundamental champions but he was a little confused because one was missing! Reality pillar? White pillar? Check. Mind pillar? Check. Creation pillar? Not here but Ares had already marked him off the list so check. Destruction pillar? Checkity check check!... Black pillar?... No check! One of Ares' clones had just checked in with Sanity about this matter, as she was definitely the level-headed person to talk to if he wanted answers of any kind, and he learnt that Black was indeed here as well, or supposed to show up at least, so unless something happened on the way here the black pillar champion should have entered the room by now! Black should have arrived with White, and white was already in the pagoda by this point, so was it just standing around outside for whatever reason?... Or was it already in here?... Hmmmm. Ares activated Omniscience and got to analysing his surroundings thoroughly but, unfortunately, he didn't spot anything out of the ordinary...

But something still felt off!

Something wasn't adding up here and there was a very strange stillness in the air that was giving Ares pause. "Hel〜lo? Anyone the〜re?" Ares called out but received no response and just looked like a fool. Even Dominus was chiding him for being cowardly and paranoid! Ares was proven right, however, when he felt something grip his back and pull him down to the ground. He tried to spin around mid-fall and throw a punch but his fist just sunk into his own unflinching shadow, followed by the rest of his body, and he disappeared from the simulated room and entered another dimension entirely. This was confirmation that his Omniscience couldn't reveal Black if they didn't want to be detected which was concerning but not actually that surprising. The Celestial Prisms were undeniably incredible but there was always a bigger fish and a fundamental champion who could specialise in stealth measures would no doubt have means to avoid its gaze. As for where Black seemed to be hiding this entire time... Well it was an unsettling realisation but it had been in his shadow all along... Hiding in other peoples' shadows was a creepy ability! A good one, though, as you could allow yourself to be carried into secret hideouts by even the lowliest of grunts if you were doing an infiltration mission of some kind. Ares was really getting a taste of the other fundamental champions' power right now but it wasn't too worrying. This wasn't like with Mako where he was stuck without all manner of benefits he had now. Garmr alone was a safety net that gave Ares plenty of wriggle room.

Right now things were pretty bad, though! Ares was sinking into a black swamp with a goopy black substance smothering his mouth, to prevent him from chanting, as well as small inky black spikes prickling into his skin and making multiple holes in him. The swamp was sinking into his insides like a poison and would eventually kill him if he did nothing. All of this and Ares had still yet to even find his opponent! Well, Ares had thought that too soon because, amidst the black murk, the silent ninja Black, or at least the parasite controlling said body, appeared before him. They were unmoving, uncaring, and still as a painting in a rather off-putting way. Ares could tell that something was very wrong with this whole scenario and he was curious to check what so he flung out a pressure bullet at the target to check the waters. He wasn't going to use his destruction magic just yet but he did want to have a rough grasp of what he was up against before making a proper move.

As for his pressure bullet Ares fired off... Black made no effort to dodge it and it became apparent why pretty much instantly. The bullet needed to travel roughly three times further Ares thought it did to even reach Black, who was somehow way further away than they looked, but even when the bullet finally crossed the massive gap it vanished. It disappeared on the spot and created a ripple roughly a single step in front of a motionless black who'd done nothing whatsoever to bring about this result. It was like Ares' bullet had sunk into a lake of infinite water between Black and himself which was a rather curious thing to witness because it had nothing to do with the murky swamp he was drowning in either; that much Ares could tell. Speaking of witnesses and this swamp, if Ares did nothing then Black would be the only witness to his demise. Ares wasn't much fussed about this as he had an out and all he had to do was cover himself in disintegration. Just some magic application to the outer layer of his skin and he became impossible to lock down in such a simple fashion because any magic restricting him would be met with disintegration's wrath and be promptly obliterated. Disintegration was not to be trifled with so, the second Ares wore it over his skin, the black murk around him retreated or disappeared if it wasn't quick enough to do so. Now that the swamp was fleeing, Ares would have kept falling through a void of emptiness if he did nothing but he used Voidwalk to hover in place and started wading through the shadows towards Black how was still watching from afar without directly interfering. There was a temptation to blow this place up but Ares felt like that wasn't wise. This was still his own shadow after all! If there were repercussions to such an act then he would restrain himself just in case so as not to blow himself up!

Ares arrived before the stoic Black and reached out with his hand... Only for it to hit an invisible wall and cause a ripple just as his pressure bullet did earlier. It didn't seem like he could pass by this wall and, at best, destroying it was his only option. Whatever Black was doing here involved a realm only it could access within the folds of this reality. It was still in this dimension, Ares could tell that much, but it was impossible to reach... What a strange ability! Did this mean Black could just live in his shadow for as long as it wanted without him being able to remove it? Is that what was being tested here? It seemed like all the fundamental champions wanted to test Ares' destruction mettle in some way or another and this was Black's trial for him to figure out... This was arguably worse than dealing with Havanah because he couldn't brute force this by using Primordial Star System... Though he could try swinging the Blade itself and severing reality with it! That would likely work. If Ares coated it in disintegration then it ought to be able to pierce this without too much hassle... Ares could also apotheosise but that was a draining trick that had some... Issues... Apotheosis was something you were only supposed to be able to do after a trial of sorts from the heavens and the pagoda clone had skipped that whole nonsense which angered some very powerful people. Whoops! They made an exception because of his circumstances in the pagoda but he had been visited by an angelic monk guy a while ago that asked him not to use it if possible. The person and their request seemed reasonable enough so Ares politely obliged and stayed away lest he cause his real self issues down the line. Unfortunately that all meant it really limited his options here... It looked like the Blade was the way to go here after all!

Ares wasted no time and simply and whipped the Blade out. It was unsheathed and ready to do its thing because, unlike real Ares, clone Ares was somewhat proficient in wielding this unruly thing! As for his plan right now, Ares wasn't going to destroy this strange wall or whatever, he had other plans because he was more interested in observing it fully and learning more about it. Ares swung with the Blade in four concise movements and, a second later, a square area in front of Ares disappeared. A small, multi-coloured vortex appeared and sucked in the nearby strands of reality until the space was full again but Black had disappeared completely alongside that dimensional thingy it was hiding inside. This was a trick real Ares was going to have to learn soon, in order to scoop up the sect and Red Sun and carry it around, because what the clone had just done was cut out space and store it in the Blade. He could treat space, and everything within it, like an object to store inside a spatial ring and it was incredibly helpful in a lot fo different situations. Having access the Blade was definitely cheating but Ares was going to manipulate the runes and allow it if everyone else was also cheating and there were plenty of ridiculous things he could pull if he wanted! At least he was still fighting fairly!

Anyway, Ares had effectively moved Black into the Blade and could carry them around to dump off somewhere else. He still couldn't harm them, he didn't understand what the weird dimension even was, but he could at least remove them from his shadow and cleanse himself of parasite status: infected. That was valuable because it meant he could take more drastic measures without injuring himself by carelessly blowing up his shadowy surroundings. As such, Ares chanted Not Even Light and swallowed up the nearby swampy darkness that still remained. It took a while but Ares did eventually spot a small light in the distance, once the murk was sufficiently cleared up, so he raced towards it and found the way out... What a trippy experience that was, exploring his own shadow and getting lost... Ares felt like he was being pulled through a tunnel at light speed when he exited his shadow, and he felt hollow inside for a split second, but he was out now and could do things as he wanted to instead of following along with Black's pace.

Ares' next step was to bring Black back out of the Blade and things immediately changed as soon as he did. Ares hadn't been able to see this in his shadow but, out herein broad daylight, it was clear as day that something really funky was going on with whatever Black was doing! The world around Ares was being reflected within Black's world but, instead of mimicking it one for one, Black's version was completely greyed out, colourless, flat, and 2d. They were a 3d entity in a 2d space but that just confused Ares even further... It was like he was looking at a piece of paper, with a greyed out snapshot of the surroundings printed on top of it, that was infinitely wide and couldn't be walked around without the front rotating to follow him. Super weird! But this did give Ares some clues to go off of compared to before because he could actually see all of this without the darkness clouding his vision... Actually, speaking of vision, Ares hadn't tried his Omniscience again since it failed the first time but it might work! Maybe not Black themself but their arts would maybe be fair game for the Prisms? Ares figured it was worth a shot to try and work his way through this puzzling art and, actually, it did work! Though Ares didn't know the name of what he was looking at, he understood roughly what was going on and it was rather fascinating! This wasn't an art, it was an aspect! If there was anything like this outside of the fundamental pillars then Ares hadn't heard of it because merely activating this aspect, by channeling its mana, created this dimensional space at will. It took up no mana whatsoever and just sort of passively existed whenever mana of its type was controlled or channelled through the body. The arts of the aspect would interact with it in.. Some way? Ares didn't know because this was his first time seeing such a thing and had no idea how the 'greyscale aspect' worked.

"Ah! What the hell!" Ares recoiled in shock as one of his other clones was going through something very similar right now! The one battling the white pillar champion was seeing this exact same thing! It was a shared aspect between white and black? And it was grey in colour... That made sense. Although, interestingly, they seemed to be using the aspect differently? Black could stand within the extra dimension whereas White could not but he could overlap the dimension over reality and do other stuff with it remotely instead.... It was rather complicated but it was definitely the kind of thing that was simpler to see than to understand. Over by White, the man in question was effectively treating the grey dimension like a map of a battlefield and laying it over reality. He could then mark out specific key areas and chokepoints and set targets in the real world that summoned mortar strikes, tank shots, and bombardments at that specific position. He was like a strategist overlooking a war on a map, and bringing in real time reinforcements and artillery strikes at will by pointing at his desired target, while also residing within the battlefield which was pretty neat... But that now raised the question of what black could do with the dimension! Well, just hiding within it seemed strong due to the fact that Black would be basically immortal in there and invincible to anyone who wasn't at least a fundamental champion. No normal magic or treasure would overcome this dimension in the slightest.

Ares was going to make a move and force a response but Black moved quicker and what followed was a flurry of events Ares struggled to keep up with. First, the grey dimension begun appearing in multiple places a once. It was no longer just 'in front' of Ares, it was reflected all around him. There were multiple grey paintings of reality encircling Ares and there was a different Black standing in each, effectively multiplying themself and trapping Ares while also outnumbering him. Ares couldn't walk past these walls, as he'd already established they were solid, so he was stuck inside a circle of assassins he couldn't track consistently or escape from. To make matters worse, it felt like every time he blinked the walls closed in on him a little as the Black clones all inched ever closer whenever he wasn't looking. Ares checked this by firing off a pressure bullet but it vanished right in front of his finger as one of the Black clones was directly in his face and he hadn't even realised. It was an optical illusion that defined common sense and the clone reached out its hand thought the wall and tried to slit Ares throat with a hidden dagger up its sleeve. This had all happened so suddenly and silently but Ares wasn't a slouch and wouldn't fall to this!

Ares moved back and avoided the dagger swipe but felt a strange disturbance behind him and could tell what was coming so he jumped forward again. Sure enough, a Black clone came lunging out of his shadow to stab him in the back but he was able to twist in mid-air and kick the clone back into his shadow. He wanted to kick it out but realised it was pointless and didn't bother. It seemed like Black didn't just hide in people's shadows but could freely teleport to them at any point which was a truly nightmarish ability. It didn't matter how many times Ares removed Black, or its clones, because they could freely return whenever they pleased and it was just something he'd always have to keep an eye on forever lest he get stabbed in the back. This wasn't the end of his woes though because next up were a bunch of black splotches that appeared out of nowhere above and all around Ares. By the time he opted to check them out with Omniscience a Black clone came flying through one with the intent of assassinating him from above... Not! It was a distraction! Another clone was trying to stab him in the back via his shadow again and it was all one big mess. His shadow, the grey dimensions that could seemingly cross infinite distances immediately while acing as a a safe haven, the multiple web of black portals that could be freely jumped between... Black was everywhere all the time!

Ares once more kicked out and blocked the attack from behind while throwing a Grand Annihilation towards the clone coming at him through the air but it disappeared into another portal int he nick of time and returned to a grey dimension to becoming immune to everything... This was obnoxious! If Ares stayed on the defensive he would be outnumbered and outmanoeuvred in this cage of grey and if he went on the offensive the grey aspect dimension would just nullify most of what he tried to do. A double whammy, this aspect was really damn powerful. This was like Skyzo's hall of mirrors magic but infinitely worse because every reflection was a real threat that could pounce whenever it spotted an opening. And yet Black STILL wasn't done terrorising Ares yet because it started summoning shadow hounds... Each reflection brought out two for now which totalled about twenty appearing all around Ares and they were also hiding within the grey dimension...

With all the portals about, and the freedom to teleport whenever and basically wherever, Ares was about to get completely overwhelmed by a deluge of shadows, teeth, and blades. Plus the real Black was undetectable whenever it wanted to be so if he ever stopped paying attention for even a split second he'd receive a knife to the heart from outta nowhere! This parasite was an evil one. Ares wasn't even sure if this thing was using arts or not because it could naturally silently cast them without need for a chant. Ares didn't think anything it done up until now was an art but that was a problem in and of itself because that meant this champion was packing even more power than this. Fighting a fundamental champion was seriously a rollercoaster of never ending bullshit... The worst part was that specialisations weren't the end of it because fundamental champions could even manage to do things they didn't necessarily excel at. An assassin like Black would maybe struggle against a large number of foes usually but it no doubt had wide reaching arts in its arsenal too to cover any and all potential weaknesses; that was jsut what it meant to be a fundamental champion at the peak of cultivation society... But Ares was the same! His destruction specialised in wide range arts but he could still manage against a single poxy an assassin if need be! Black was going to learn the hard way that Ares was the one fundamental champion that really shouldn't be messed with! Destruction was the combat pillar for a reason and so Ares cracked his knuckles and got ready to tango with this sneaky leech for real!